Wouldn't it actually be less dangerous to the mother in these cases to go through with the birth without messing with procecure, and then to kill the baby?

Great question. Answer is yes, but then you would have to call it infanticide. Abortion fans are just playing word games.

Seems that people are missing the point here. There are only two reasons for which a doctor is allowed to do this: firstly if the life of the mother is in danger; and secondly in the case of major trauma or malformation of the foetus. This is *not* an alternative to birth control, and has *no* relevance to "unwanted" births.

For the first possibility, I hope it's blindingly obvious why it's needed - the mother will die otherwise, and the foetus's chances of survival are very low. Economic pressures simply are not present here, nor word games either.

For the second possibility, it's a factor of the *potential* human being's life. A foetus is *not* a human being, only a *potential* human being after sufficient development to be able to survive outside the womb. In addition, the doctors and parents must consider quality of life if the foetus is carried to term, hence the woman in Kat's link deciding for a late-term abortion because of hydrocephaly. If the child, when born, will be incapable of independent movement, incapable of conscious though and/or in constant intolerable pain forever, the parents will have to consider whether *they* think carrying the foetus to term is in its best interests - in other words, whether killing it is being kinder to it. Yes, there is also the question of whether they think they could look after such a child for the rest of its life, but the economic impact of this is basically irrelevant compared to everything else. The question is "could I look after this child for the rest of my life?", not "could I afford to look after this child for the rest of my life?".

Yes, this does have a crossover with euthanasia. The common question is: if you are responsible for an animal's care, and that animal is suffering intolerably with no possibility of improvement, you would have it put down painlessly; so why is the same option not open for humans? If a litter of puppies included one with no central nervous system such that it could never think or even breathe on its own, would you insist on life support for it for 20 years until it died of old age?

Graham.